


Entrecôte (between the ribs)

by blesser



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chef AU, Culinary technique kink, Culinary terminology kink, Kissing, M/M, Minor Violence, Pining, Red Dragon reimagined, Workplace Relationship, mostly mutual pining, non graphic stabbing flashbacks, past relationship, so much kissing on in and against kitchen apparatus, unseasonal seasonal fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-04 05:38:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10984482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blesser/pseuds/blesser
Summary: “J'ai l'intention de faire pour mon dernier travail un livre de cuisine composé de souvenirs et de désirs." (I intend that my last work shall be a cook book composed of memories and desires) – Alexandre Dumas.***It's over a thousand miles from Sugarloaf Key to Baltimore. Will makes the trip in the snow for the first time in three years just to look through the glass of the pass at the last person he ever wanted to share air with, let alone a workspace.ORThe appallingly sappy, pining, chef AU that nobody asked for





	1. End of the World, Last Taste of Wine (when you were mine)

“How’s the weather?”

There is a too long and staticky pause down the phone and Will, unsure, pulls it from his ear to check the call is still connected.

“Seriously?”

“Is it snowing?” he asks –seriously- chewing his lip unconsciously.

“Will please, it’s Florida, of course it isn’t snowing.”

“Are you sure?”

Will tucks the phone under his chin and manages to fumble his case off of the luggage rail. All the way from Florida, he can hear a far off chuckle of disbelief.

“Because it’s a total white out over here,” he tries to sound authoritive, fails.

“Am I sure it isn’t snowing? Pretty. It is about one million degrees. Oh shit… and, damn, my choux is splitting.”

“Turn the heat up,” Will says distractedly, “beat it.”

With a long practiced technique, he takes a sharp turn and expertly ducks and weaves his way through the largest family gaggle in the airport, all of whom are crying and grabbing and hugging and -for some reason- bedecked in actual wreaths of tinsel.

“Why are you so concerned with the weather, shouldn’t you be focussed on the job Will?”

“I am focussed on the job. I literally just landed at BWI, it's just I have something fermenting in the out-house is all, and I don’t want it freezing over.”

“Intriguing. I will check on it later. Will, don’t worry.”

It isn’t hard to imagine Molly, stressed but capable Molly, her hair in a messy bun and gesticulating wildly. Kitchen a particularly function mess, her notes scribbled everywhere as she brandishes a whisk while she talks, inevitably sending arcs of eclair batter flying.

“You sure it’s going to be ok? Me being here I mean, I can still get a connect-”

“For the seven hundredth time,” Molly interrupts, “It’s going to be ok.”

“All right,” Will mumbles, trying not to sound as unsure as he feels, “thanks. Hey, how are you?”

“Ha, glad to see your priorities are: food, work and then me,” Molly says teasingly, not unkindly.

“The food always comes first.”

“Right. Well, you are definitely back to normal, Will, I can cancel your head examination.”

“Don’t be hasty. God, I must be crazy to be back here.”

There is a pause on the line. He hears Molly take a sighing breath and then –incredibly- the sea is audible, a familiar crashing background lull.

“You said it,” Molly sighs finally, “not me.”

“Huh,” he doesn’t disagree, “where are you?”

“On the deck.”

“Making pastry?”

He can see it so clearly, can conjure the clouds of flour erupting up against the real, winter, mackerel-striped ones, not a soul on the beach bar the dogs braving the sea and maybe some real, hardcore post-Christmas walkers. The whole imagined scene is the smell of Mangrove Mama's lobster reuben, absurdly familiar.

“You know it relaxes me Will.”

“I thought cooking relaxes you?”

“Ha fucking ha. Good one.”

“It used to,” he smiles.

“Sure, now cooking enrages me. But cooking on the porch ain't so bad. You have your whisky, Will, I have the sea.”

"If that keeps you happy."

"Will Graham, always the peacekeeper with the human resources mind even a thousand miles away."

"I don't have a human resources mind," Will says, only half faking aghast and offended.

"Of course you don't," she assures him quickly, but then can't seem to help adding, "but a stickler and a worrier all the same."

Will hangs up to her dstracted laughter, for the eclair batters sake as much as his own.

It is snowing and insane at the front of the airport, Will hadn’t exaggerated the white out one bit. He has also made the monumental mistake of choosing rush hour to travel, and what with a cold storm front looming over town and it being two days after Christmas, well, that probably doesn’t help either.

Eventually, he manages to duck into a cab ahead of a handsy couple who are thankfully trying too hard to climb into each others mouths to notice Will climbing into and stealing their ride. This trip into the city involves a forty dollar tip and an actual tip about what the cab driver should make his new in-laws for New Year brunch that means he can still watch the game.

“You just got home from visiting?” the driver eyes the one small suitcase and its luggage sticker, “Florida huh?”

“No. I live in Florida," Will hesitates, "I'm just here visiting actually.”

“Family?”

Will looks out over the once familiar, frosty view of the bay. The cab windows are steamed up and the multi-coloured string lights outside look planet shaped and surreal against the blurry glass.

“Something like that,” he mumbles.

The driver obviously catches his expression in the rear view and must read something into it because he huffs out a sympathetic ‘me too pal’ laugh. The tires quake and slip slightly on the icy roads but the jovial driver seems unperturbed. Will tries to be too.

“You want a hotel? Or are we heading straight into the hornets nest?”

“Straight in. Take a left on Light Street.”

“That’s a nice part of town man, good views. Good damn views,” he flips up the dash radio for an aggressively jangly Christmas tune.

Will tries very hard not to flinch.

“So,” the driver shouts, “you got somebody waiting up for you?”

“God I hope not.”

 

 

“Congratulations Hannibal, you are officially insane.”

Alana swirls the wine in her glass and takes a delicate sip. She picks up the bottle, pretending to be deeply absorbed in reading the label.

“Ah,” she nods agreeably, “subtle hints of white chocolate, pink peppercorn and, let’s see, my need to have a drink before ten am? Should pair nicely with the medallions.”

Congenially, Hannibal tilts his own glass and they clink together in silent agreement.

Alana leans forward and starts making her daily, careful annotations to the menu. Her cheeks are flushed with what is probably a combination of stress, cold and the white wine before breakfast.

“Are you seriously not considering it?” she says to the paper before her, voice probing.

“I am not a runner, Alana,” Hannibal sets the finished tomato concasse aside. The ice cubes and tomatoes clink against the metal bowl, it is perfect, his fingers are frozen.

“No,” Alana concedes, voice resigned but still she does not look up from her detailed notes, “you aren’t smart enough for that."

Hannibal’s tightly controlled smile hopefully says what his voice can’t be bothered to articulate.

“Once, maybe.”

“It is three days,” she says, all sighs, “I don’t understand what kind of person would refuse paid leave over New Year?”

“The sort of person who puts the work first.”

“The food comes first?” she quotes laughingly.

He shrugs, dabbing dry his hands on his apron.

“You play with fire, Hannibal.”

“As often as I can. Now are you going to stand on the other side of that line all morning and drink company booze or are you going to do a job?”

Alana tips back her own and then Hannibal’s glass and the remainder of his wine. A breakfast prep shift treat or just a stolen bribe? A mysterious woman, her motivations are as clear as the murky contents of the bowl on the counter sometimes. When she stands, she leaves only a kiss of shell pink lipstick behind.

So, a refused bribe it is then.

“Sorting you out is a full time job,” she picks up the menu and the bottle for good measure and heads for the door.

Alana kicks the swing but doesn't exit. Instead, on the first fall, she catches the door and hesitates, hovers really.

“He might not have forgiven you, you know.”

“Like you haven’t?”

Pointedly, Alana ignores him and turns away.

“Alana,” he calls and she looks back, eyebrow raised and whole stance braced for attack, “the Malbec. With the medallions, please.”

She inclines her head and it is appeasment and victorious agreement all in one. The sweetness of white chocolate and the fire of pepperorns.

 

 

The coffee machine at the Academy is one of the most expensive pieces of machinery in the whole place –second after the much sought after sousvide kit- and for many years, the machine had one very favourite, very addicted customer. With an oddly detached sentimentality, Hannibal watches from a safe distance as Will Graham tamps down on the beans for what is probably his dozenth coffee already.

It is as though not a second has passed, a single shift perhaps, but not years surely?

Wisely, like observing a tiger, Hannibal hangs back and spends a few harmless moments watching him and then a few more marvelling at how one so caffeinated can be quite so lethargic looking. All of a sudden it hits him -like flying crockery to the head- that this is the first time he has laid eyes on Will in three years.

The coffee machine makes a startled, hurt noise like it too remembers.

“You aren’t wearing your glasses,” Hannibal says, stupidly, quietly, in a hushed whisper that sounds just a little too much like a beg for forgiveness. _What is wrong with him? Like, clinically?_

Will to his credit does not do the expected, he doesn’t freeze at the sound of the voice, doesn’t whip around or run away. Gone, it seems, is the old Will, that wounded dog, smudgy version of himself. Three years has made him sharper, more controlled, it is right there in the set of his shoulders.

The last drip of coffee falls into his cup in excruciating slow motion and only then once the surface ripples have fully settled does Will turn to look down the bar at Hannibal.

“And you aren’t holding a knife on me,” Will says plainly, “so I guess a lot has changed since we last saw each other.”

“Ah. No,” Hannibal stretches his hands wide and sighs, "guilty. But you _are_ holding grudges now Will is that right?”

Will looks unimpressed. And it’s true, he is so very full to the brim, overflowing with ugly, ugly grudge. And he feels some kind of ‘emotional jetlag’ in his bones on top of that.

Stretching, he runs a hand across the back of his neck and keeps it there and when he nods sardonically it looks as though he is moving his own head manually by the throat.

“This is crazy,” he says quietly, possibly to himself, eyes closed.

“I just spent more than half an hour trying to explain the difference between prosciutto and prosecco to a supplier. I am moving the goal posts on crazy.”

“Wow, a sports analogy. Good one.”

“You must have rubbed something good off on me.”

“Right,” Will pulls up a laugh from somewhere, but it doesn’t seem like a particularly nice sound. He is wearing that horrible, polite mask of civility and smells like burnt coffee, airport soap and some unfamiliar cologne.

Hannibal -who teaches muscle control and mental self discipline for a living- takes an infinitesimal step forward. And, because the two of them have been playing a game of mirrors since the beginning, with Hannibal’s tiny step forward, Will steps back.

“You could at least say it was good to see me.”

“Good?” Will picks up his precious coffee and shakes his head, “getting work after you happened to me was good. Feeling sensation in my left hand after you happened to me was good. Was it _good_ to see you?” Will cants his head to the side, like Hannibal was something unlabelled, moulding interestingly and nastily in the fridge, “no.”

Will has many particular ways –both subtle and very decidedly unsubtle- of running away from people. Hannibal flicks back through countless memories of him ducking away from the critics and socialites at banquets, withdrawing from crowds or letting questions glance off of him entirely. 

There is a movement reserved just for shrugging Zeller’s arm from his shoulder and another especially saved for detaching from a conversation with Jack, mainly involving just -backing from the room- mid sentence.

Last time involved running all the way to Florida.

With all this knowledge and experience, it is still a shock right now in this moment -after seeing Will Graham run away for years- for Hannibal to watch him leave. And he knows, albeit in the deeply hidden and locked cold storage part of his heart with the heavy doors, it is because this is the first time he ever had to watch Will leave whilst having no doubt that following is absolutely not permitted.

 

 

_The doors to the outside have always been a little rusty and today the strength needed to shove them open is nearly beyond Will’s power._

_He has worked a full week of double splits and, honestly, he is having trouble finding the energy to push the service bell let alone this ten tonne bar on the fire escape doors._

_Stepping out is not exactly the refreshment he sought, the air seems impossibly hotter outside than it did in the kitchen and it hits him like a scalding, unforgiving brick wall._

_Blinking like a surfacing mole against the August glare, Will spots Hannibal leaning against the stair railing. He looks irritatingly put-together and cool. All his jacket buttons are done up and everything, eyes closed peacefully against the aggressive late afternoon sunshine._

_“You know full well this area is for smoking,” Will admonishes jokingly, ecery step of his approach is like wading through overcooked treacle._

_Hannibal doesn’t even move a muscle at his voice or presence, like he was just out here waiting. Burning and waiting. “_

_And here I thought it was for escaping.”_

_"Same difference.”_

_"It really is a terrible habit, very antisocial,” Hannibal’s eyes stay closed but he makes a face at the smell as Will lights one up anyway._

_"That’s the dream,” Will says around the cigarette, “and yet here you are anyway.”_

_Hannibal smiles, eyes opening just a fraction to slits._

_“_ _I was here first,” he says without force, “sort of.”_

_Will looks out at the lot, over the dumpsters and the dock to the bay, where the sun on the water truly is hard to look at._

_While he is distracted, Hannibal takes the opportunity to creep his hand out and pluck the offending thing away from him._

_“_ _I’m very careful about what I put into my body,” Hannibal says preachingly, taking a single, long and not all too reluctant drag. Will watches his fingers, until he has to look away. He is too tired, far too tired._

_“I’m not.”_

_“Well,” apparently done with indulging, Hannibal stubs out on the railing and lets it fall to the cigarette graveyard below, “quite.”_

_Will shifts awkwardly, too exhausted and too… himself, to try and read between all of Hannibal’s very well pressed and complicated lines right now. Even with, well everything, he doesn't know his formula enough to untangle all of the hidden jokes and double meanings yet._

_“Listen,” Will says hurriedly, “your work this morning was, I mean, the turn around alone was insane. I’ve never seen anything like it.”_

_“All your ideas,” Hannibal shifts around and puts his arms on the railing, back-lit now and rather devestating truth be told, “I’d never heard of anything like it. And,” his mouth quirks up at the corner, “you weren’t so bad yourself.”_

_"Right. Also, last night. I feel like I should maybe apologise? I’m just tired and I was stressed out about this morning’s service and I hardly want to make things difficult for you, you just got here and Jack-”_

_“Will, could you do me a favour?”_

_“Ok,” he nods dumbly._

_“Could you, in future, never immediately reference Jack Crawford after any connotation to what happened last night?”_

_There is a beat, then, laughing too loudly in part hysteria, part relief, Will agrees._

_“Settling in well then?”_

_“Something like that. You’ve definitely got the nicest, most surprisingly comfortable walk in cold stores I’ve been in for years, not too cold, rarely used, sturdy lock…”_

_They both stand in overheating but easy silence for longer than they probably should, nothing but the heat and the suggestion between them. Will imagines their abandoned posts inside and that train of thought leads to imagining the entire service frozen in time, nothing boiling over and nobody yelling for just a minute._

_It is so peaceful, in fact, that when Hannibal speaks Will jumps a little, as far gone drifting as he was there._

_“Can I buy you a drink?”_

_It's such an odd request, and Will notes, rather defunct at this point that he narrows his eyes._

_“Bev will give you whatever you want from the bar you know, if you ask nicely enough.”_

_“No, I mean, something that hasn’t come from the cellar and been poured by the same people we’ve been looking at for the past nineteen hours."_

_Hannibal pushes off the railing. It's one of the first things Will noticed watching him work, that constant frenetic yet controlled motion, always moving but never in a hurry. Confident and unstoppable. It would be infuriating if it wasn't so damn effective._

_“I could do with a break,” he says._

_“Oh,” Will leans back on the door, letting it prop him up “but you’ve been looking at me for the past nineteen hours too.”_

_Not smiling with his mouth, as far as Will can tell, Hannibal gets very close to him._

_He crowds Will’s immovably worn out form against the door in his effort to reach past for the handle, his voice is so close to Will’s ear and pitched so low that he nearly just **sits down** with the stupidly nice sensation of it coupled with the heat._

_"Haven’t I just.”_

 

 

“You don’t think I feel terrible about this?”

“I’m unconvinced you feel guilty about anything Jack, honestly.”

Half agreeing, Jack has the common sense not to argue and, instead of characteristically retorting, he shoots Will a patiently infuriating look and waves a two fingered, summoning salute at the bartender. Silent lecturing and avoidance in place of confrontation is The Jack Crawford Special and a house favourite.

“You asked me here as a favour,” Will has gotten more defensive with time if possible, or maybe just more external about it.

“So you would’ve turned me down if you knew? Will I thought we were friends.”

“I don’t,” Will glances back at the group, “listen, a briefing would’ve been nice as a colleague. As a _friend_ a heads up might have been fucking appreciated.”

"I don't appreciate the air quotes, or the goddamn language. We aren't in your kitchen now Will."

"Don't I fucking know it," Will says, watching with silent judgement as a silver foil tray of limp canapes passes them.

Bad voulevants aside, it's good of their usual downtown haunt to get them all in, especially with all the Christmas parties drinkers rammed into the place tonight.

Somehow though, Jack has been haunting this joint for a decade or so and as a result pretty much the entire staff are jammed into two top booths, flanking an oversized Christmas tree. Pre competition and pre event strategy meetings haven’t changed in three years it seems, Will observes as he watches the junior wait staff sip at sambucca shots and throw tinsel. In fact, they just appear to somehow contain even less strategy and more alcohol.

Will is thinking about sports news and the tiny but quiet hotel bathtub when Jack goes ahead and opens his mouth.

“For the record,” hesounds as close to placating, if not actually apologising, as he ever has, “I didn’t know he was going to be around.”

Will scoffs nastily.

“Since when do you conveniently forget you have a disgraced, unlicensed Chef on your payroll Jack? Seems like the sort of thing one of your weekly stock checks might dig up.”

“Alana told me she was taking care of it-“ _a sudden, hilariously morbid image of Alana trying to_ _subdue Hannibal and stash_ _him out of sight in a meat freezer hangs in the air_ “-and she doesn’t usually take no for an answer.”

Jack runs a hand down his face, he looks exactly the same except his beard has grown out a little and he seems to have added one hundred years to his stress-age.

“Besides,” Jack somehow perks up at the magical appearance of a dozen or so, sweating beers on the bar, “Hannibal isn’t exactly ‘on my payroll’ per say."

“Jesus Christ.”

“Don’t be so melodramatic. What choice did I have? And, ok, can’t this wait until tomorrow Will? Please just, give me a hand with these would you.”

“Is saying no and going home an option here…?”

“I don’t know Will. You ever had the guts to try it?”

Will spends the next ten minutes seething silently into his gross beer, listening to the mixologists tell a very gesticulatory and involved story about a crate of cucumbers. Alana keeps shooting Will bullets of emotional concern that might be physically catching him they are so forceful.

A seasoned introvert, Will keeps his eyes down and stays towards the back of the group, like old times. It doesn’t take very long for Hannibal to seek him out, like old times. With fond albeit unsettling memory, Will thinks back to when this might have been a private occurrence, maybe in the bathroom or the bar parking lot or a dry goods locker. Not in front of the entire front and back of house team plus a handful of management.

“Has our consultant been briefed?”

Sitting five people over and strategically out of Will’s eye line, Hannibal’s voice cuts through the team’s many layered rambling. He asks in a mild and business like tone, 'politely curious’ which everyone here knows is really just Hannibal for ‘intentionally needling’ and ‘potentially harmful’.

With a synchronicity Will would have killed for back when they were his brigade, every head turns to him.

Zeller takes a loud, ice-breaking slurp of his snowball.

“I’m here to win the Academy a star at the New Year’s banquet,” Will says vaguely, unintentionally vain and matter of fact, “because Jack asked me.”

Only visable after a good deal of surreptitious neck craning and side eyeing, Hannibal is reclining in a navy sweater that probably cost more as Will’s car. He seems at home and irritatingly handsome, with an honest to god mug of tea in front of him. Will almost shudders with something closely identifiable as rage.

“Wait, Jack,” one of the more gossipy prep chefs gasps, “you haven’t told Will?”

“ _Wait, Jack, you haven’t told Will,_ is going to be the title of our Food Network documentary show,” Price says not-so-quietly.

“Hannibal, stop talking,” Alana sets her glass down firmly.

“Oh, and there’s the tagline.”

Everyone takes awkward sips and looks anywhere but towards this brewing show down. Everybody that is, except Price who is raising his hand in mock-permission-asking fashion.

“Can I drop the exposition here,” he says gleefully, “please?”

Jack looks like he would rather he didn’t, but the man is hard to stop, especially with a good story to divulge.

“Buckle up Will, no mental wandering. Once upon a time,” Price starts, “there was a little boy. The little boy ate a lot of bad, bad cafeteria dinners and his grandmother made him eat glass-“

“Sweet Jesus,” somebody mutters.

“-Ok, ok, so maybe not. But _something_ happened to make this kid decide ‘when I grow up I want to murder peoples careers and eviscerate their very artwork in front of them,” Price looks slurringly angry now which is a truly interesting face on him, “so he became…”

There is an uncoordinated two man drum roll smacked out on the table.It sounds like bad breadmaking and has Will itching for a rolling pin or any other blunt object.

“…The Dragon!” Zeller thunders, echoing the word and bouncing it dramatically into his half empty glass.

All the actual adults in the booth are narrowing their eyes, all bar Bev, who has her phone tilted like she is filming this.

“I don’t get it,” Will –who literally gets paid to connect the dots- shrugs, “so he’s a critic. And a mean one, ok, but why the Dragon?”

“Well,” Zeller shrugs nonchalantly, “perhaps because when he is done roasting you alive in his write up, he goes after your whole kingdom, the whole restaurant, even your family…”

“He _goes after families?_ What the hell?”

Jack looks a little more inclined now, perhaps because he can engage now with fact and impart a bit of incentive. Only Jack can use a horror story as a workplace morale booster.

“You know the Jakobi’s Deli that’s been on South Eden for about a hundred years?” he jabs his thumb over his shoulder, as though pointing out the place from here, “this guy dragged and questioned their family recipe for Bourikas.”

Price, still apparently so freshly furious about this, makes such a wild, cross gesture he sends an overhead hanging bauble flying across the room.

“He said the recipe was just a ‘cheap imitation of a lazy food channel classic' I mean, can you believe?”

Everyone unanimously shakes their head in respectful, tipsy disbelief.

“I would’ve spat in his Matzoh Ball Soup,” Bev wrinkles her nose in uncharacteristic fury and curses more threats under her breath.

Will absorbs all the this information slower than usual, wondering if he has perhaps reached full saturation of weird conversations and nostalgic fuckery. He misses his comfort zone, his dogs, Molly and the restaurant on the beach… He definitely doesn’t miss hannibal’s eyes on him like he is the diner and Will the poor lobster in the tank.

“How does the fearsome Dragon feature in all this then? Did one of you lie about your produce origins again on the menu?”

“Oh please, Richmond is local-ish and nowhere has good raspberries in season in this state, ever. But the point is, he is coming,” Bev doesn’t beat about the bullshit, “New years eve, two days away, under the full moon bla bla, and he would probably like nothing more than to dig out our secrets and flaws with a steak knife and feed them to us. He is the fight here Will, nothing else.”

All eyes are on him, Wills skin prickles, he looks around the booths at all the familiar faces he hasn’t thought about (lie) for three years.

“Well, what do you want me to do,” he says, bordering on hysterically irritated, “kill the guy?”

“Will,” Alana leans with an impressive grace and lack of clinking across the bottle city that has somehow built up on their table, she takes his hand none too lightly, “you know what we need you to do.”

Bless Alana. Really, she can probably hear the triumphant sweeping victory music in her idealist mind. And based on all the other awed faces and open mouths, all these other drunk idiots can too.

All Will can hear is a sad Christmas song on the jukebox about driving home.

Figures.

So, instead of leaping up onto his chair for a rousing speech, Will just scratches his chin and sighs, mulling over Alana’s words.

“You do realise that is _exactly_ what you say when you want somebody to kill some guy right?”

The neighbouring table releases a gunshot cacophony of party streamers and it dissipates the tension somewhat. In fact, Hannibals face when a string of confetti lands in his stupid drink almost makes it worth leaving the hotel, Will thinks viciously as he takes a smug swig of beer.

 

 

“Will!”

Like the deadest person in a horror movie, Will immediately jumps and drops the keys to his hire car.

"Yeah, smart move Graham,"  he mutters, looking dumbly at the ground where not even his feet are visible.

“Could you do me a favour?”

The disembodied voice carries across the unlit parking lot.

_Could you do me a favour? Will is five years ago and leaning on a heatwave scorched fire escape, smelling the salt from the bay, sun in his eyes, wanting nothing but to please –say yes- remind himself that last night wasn’t another damn his overworked brain created out of thin-_

_Could you do me a favour? Please don’t-_

_He is bleeding, he is trying to get-_

“No,” Will snaps, crouching down irritably to scrabble about in the asphalt void that has eaten his car keys.

Hannibal laughs softly and Will can actually see him now, melting out of the shadows and approaching with his head bowed and hands in pockets. He looks… cowed? Apologetic? It is not a look that is working for him one bit.

“It isn’t a favour that costs anything.”

“Look that word up in the dictionary,” Will slurs, spotting the glint of his keys in passing headlights and dives for them, “and get back at me.”

“Fair play. Lets call it a request form one professional to another then shall we?” Hannibal says conversationally, “may I request that you don’t poison this critic fellow? I wouldn’t want you to do that to the food.”

It’s a joke, because here it is, that moonlit parking lot cornering he expected, wanted, whatever.

Deflecting and a second behind, Will looks up so fast his neck clicks, he is flabbergasted.

“Why is that?” he straightens up quickly but unsteadily, “you got a sterling reputation hidden somewhere I don’t know about? How are you even- where are you here? How are you not fired?”

Hannibal shrugs modestly.

“I admit the invite was unexpected, I am not often permitted on these sort of bonding excursions,” only he could say ‘bonding excursions’ with the same enthusiasm as ‘double root canal’, “I was fired though, check the books.”

“Ha. You and I both know that Jack’s books aren’t jack shit.”

“Now, now Will. Jack is a very meticulous man.”

“Sure,” Will wonders if this sudden temple headache is an early hangover or just a reaction to this proximity, “meticulous in manipulation.”

Maybe he slurs on the alliteration or sways on his feet perhaps, but suddenly more of the street lights are blacked out and Hannibal is standing much closer. Will can feel himself deflating with the seconds and the closeness. The dark pressing in and it's a welcome home and a fear all in one.

“I’m taking you home.”

As a testament to what a good idea that really is, Will has a horrifying moment where in he actually thinks about the alternate meaning there, considers it even. He stands in a back lot beer and wings joint, with nothing but a hotel pass and a lost set of hire car keys and considers whether, just maybe, he can slam these years of bitterness and anger out with his hands and his mouth and feel any better by the morning.

“You don’t look well Will, in fact, you look awfully flushed,” Hannibal says, because Hannibal is an asshole.

Will mumbles something unintelligible on purpose and shrugs a lot to help the awkwardness pass.

“I’m not letting you hurt yourself, or anyone else for that matter,” Hannibal says sadly, wisely, because Hannibal is an asshole but once upon a time he was the best thing.

In a matter ofmiliseconds, the keys are being plucked out of Will’s hands so fast he is helpless to stop it. Left staring down at his open palm and blinking.

“You are going to need to work on your dexterity if you intend on pulling this off Will,” Hannibal jokes, pocketing the keys.

 _How’s this for dexterity?_ Will imagines getting one good hit in, or at least touching him once solidly. And then he can be back on a plane home to white sandy beaches.

Instead of assault, Will allows Hannibal to steer him towards his car and he buckles himself in, quite dexterously, thank you very much. The engine hasn't even fired up before Will is easily sliding down into the familiar soft leather.

There is an alarming number of people on the streets for the hour. Mainly staggering groups weaving, sporting tissue paper hats and carolling out of tune down Main street.

It is only two days after Christmas, but Will has almost forgotten the day at all. He spent it on the boat stocking up for service the next day. Nothing but him and the water and the biting breeze. And the dead fish.

These slick, snow decked streets and all the dazzling lights in the darkness are a far cry from the holiday aesthetic in Sugarloaf Key. Too drunk to be truly melancholy, Will gazes half assertive at the view. He is stirred occasionally because he is partially attuned to Hannibal’s voice over the quiet jazz from the music system, he doesn’t stop talking the whole way to the hotel.

After four unlucky red stop lights, where the car idles and the flurry gathers on the windscreen, Will thunks his forehead on the cool, condensation heavy glass and drifts with the snow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA do not have sex in walk in refrigerators they have temperamental locks
> 
> Ok.
> 
> Chapter title from Night Terrors of 1927  
> when you were my waste of time


	2. Pressure Points, They Pressure You Right Back (come on think about it)

The Academy straddles the border between two districts, at the feet of Little Italy and flanking Fells Point, with a view down the Patapsco that other dining rooms would kill for.

The equal proximity to both neighbourhoods and therefore both the authentic pasticceria’s and the water, means that within a week even the lowest KP at the Academy knows how to make two things: Blue Crab and a damn good cream cannoli. Will can smell both as soon as he steps into the back of house.

He has wisely chosen to bypass Jack’s office directly and instead of the main steps, takes the steps to the side entrance by the water. Given that the building used to be an old Naval Academy, there are plenty of Officer doors and ways in and out undetected and at this moment in time Will is thankful for every single one of them.

This isn't a homecoming.

The scent of Bay Spice hits Will as though memory is a physical hand reaching down the corridor to slap him. He shivers, both bitterly cold in the unheated corridor and utterly unnerved. His unease is soothed somewhat as he draws closer to the kitchens and notices that the lockers are absolutely rammed and there isn’t a single apron on any of the pegs outside, an encouragingly productive sign at least.

Even knowing this, Will is not prepared for what awaits him in the main kitchen. The swing doors still have that tell tale squeak on the left that he had forgotten about until it serves to announce him, loudly, given the odd quietness of the room. The squeak comically repeats itself over and over as the momentum of the door rocking winds down.

The kitchen is very still, the whole room set to simmer. There are at least a dozen chefs gathered at the pass, Jack and Alana are visible there too. As Will appears around the meat fridges they all turn to him as one set of expectant eyes.

So he isn’t the first one in at five in the morning anymore then, an interesting and irritating change. Irritating, it seems to some of the younger, more tired eyes looking at him with a mixture of curiousity and sleepy impatience. Half a dozen huge kettles are lined up on the stove top for morning prep, the end one looks to be set a fraction too high.  _It's going to boil over_ , Will thinks automatically. However nobody else seems to have noticed or looks particularly awake, not even usually bright eyed Alana, who Will wants to run to for some old, familiar reason.

“Sorry,” Will says, voice echoing against the tiles with only the soft hum of six ovens cushioning the sound, “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Interrupt?” Jack smiles blandly, for a Line Manager he has never been a morning person, “Will, we are here for you.”

Will nods, not actually understanding.

“We have gathered up a little team,” ten blue hats stand up a little straighter, “to help you with whatever you need, sourcing, menu… Will?”

“Wow," Will realises he had laughed, a disbeleiving little huff while Jack was speaking, "this guy has really got you spooked huh?”

Jack rankles imperceptibly.

“What is it you need Will? We’ve got a job to do here,” he isn’t pretending to smile anymore.

“I just came to get my books.”

“Books?" Jack, a hands-on, practical type, says the word the way some chefs might say 'microwave', "Will, the banquet is _two_ _days_ _away._ I really don't think we have time for the usual-”

“I know what day it is thanks.”

“You think you can do this on the fly?”

“You haven’t given me much choice,” Will tries not to sound smug, it's the truth not a brag, something that escapes a lot of people's notice when he speaks, “besides, do you have anyone who can do what I can do better not on the fly?”

The last kettle lid starts bouncing against the predicted overboiling, foam crackles as it hits the top and the scent from the steamer basket of burnt lemon and crab intsenfies.

“Hangovers make you rude Will,” Jack sighs.

The little army of eager helpers between them look trapped and uncomfortable, Will almost feels sorry for them.

“Alright, your books. Anything else?”

Will scans the room reluctantly but comes up short in his search.

“One more thing. I don’t need-“ Will waves his hands to encapsulate and indicate the gaggle of Commis at the pass, “I just need one person.”

They all perk up, but Jack and Alana visibly crumble.

“I don’t think-“ Alana starts.

“I can wait," Will cuts across her, voice surprisingly strong considering he's half an hour out of bed with no coffee in him, "wait until I’m driven to it? Or I can get on with this, do what I need to and win this thing.”

“Is that really an opinion you need?” Alana is unsurprisingly unconvinced.

“It is a… _mindset_ that I need to recover.”

The poor little mob look like they are considering mass suicide via the boiling pots of crab rather than being trapped in this conversation for another minute. So there are rumours then, stories, the stuff of kitchen folklore.

Alana makes an interesting noise through her pursed lips, face stony. Jack just looks like thunder itself, with a hearty side of resignation.

“I just need one person,” Will clarifies quickly, as though the faster he says it the easier the confession, “Hannibal.”

Alana releases a held breath that carries the force of one hundred of her best scoldings.

“And also maybe,” Will moves from foot to foot, “a couple of cannolis, when they’re done.”

Everybody clears out of the room with a curt nod from their leader. Will glances around the kitchen and spots at least three more things likely to catch or boil over unattended. Honestly, nobody is serious about this business anymore. He moves to the nearest combi oven and sets about rescuing a tray of bread rolls, cursing when his glasses steam up.

Like the devil himself, or a bad penny or something, Hannibal appears in the doorway, announced by the damn squeaking door.

Whether fetched in a hurry by an unlikely Alana or just always attuned to Will’s discomfort, he leans casually and unobtrusively on the threshold. His apron has a hip level, four fingertip drag of red staining it, the bright red of summer fruits or fresh blood, cranberry red.

“Will please,” Jack’s hands have found their usual spot massaging his temples like he can force the pressure headache out by force, “the man _stabbed_ you with a knife.”

“Oyster shucker,” Hannibal and Will chorus, carefully not looking at each other.

Jack sighs for what is probably the five hundred and tenth time today.

“He screwed us over, nearly brought down this whole place and us with it! I can’t even look at him some days,” he hisses, “and you want to trust him with this?”

Will sets the rolls down on the counter and begins twisting the hot cloth over and over, having adopted that glazed over concentration face he gets when Jack is yelling. He shrugs one shoulder and doesn’t look at anybody as he speaks, instead finding great interest in the rack of colanders just above Hannibal’s head.

“We need this,” he says finally and then walks back out the way he came, this time taking the silent door.

 

 

_His head feels very, very clear and calm._

_When he closes his eyes yellow petals bloom outwards from the centre of the blackness. Will opens his mouth automatically and the cold rush of air he inhales is enough to make his teeth chatter. Somebody is singing._

_"Woah, where were these when I was a trainee, man,” a few people join in laughing, “can I get another one?”_

_Will tries to concentrate, screwing his eyes shut as the petals shrink away in his mind. He itches for pen and paper. Carefully, he moves the flower to the back of his tongue and another tingling surge of sour coolness shorts out his taste buds. Woah, indeed._

_“And my mother told me never to suck batteries,” Zeller is saying through a mouthful._

_"Bar staff are here by courtesy,” Alana chides, “this is a spring to summer menu review not spring break, Zeller put that back. No, don’t spit it out-"_

_Will’s entire mouth is numb, his next breath feels like it is taken in a blizzard._

_He opens his eyes._

_"What are we doing with these?” Bev is eyeing the box of yellow buds with her arms folded, she keeps taking little comfort sips of her coffee and then wincing._

_"New York is loving them, or so I hear. Unpleasant little things,” Price decides, smacking his lips._

___"No,” Hannibal has his eyes closed too, head on one side thoughtfully, “don’t misread unusual for unpleasant.”_

_“They are... soothing and overloading, simultaneously,” Will clears his throat._

_"So, what, garnish again?” Alana pinches an acid yellow flower between her fingers and looks closely at it, “they are very lovely and deadly looking.”_

_Will shakes his head slowly, irritably, annoyed that other people have to happen to good thought processes._

___"No. And on that subject,” he turns to the very hungover Commis to his left, “if I see you put one more fucking physalis on a plate as it leaves my kitchen you will be following it on the next plate out.”_

_The rather stunned silence is broken by Alana’s pen scratching something down on her clipboard._

_“What?” she says in answer to Will’s glare, I’m just llisting potential side effects and allergens, these are unchartered territory for us.”_

_“And what side effect did I just demonstrate worth noting?”_

_“I wouldn’t like to say, I prefer to keep these briefings a positive, curse-word free zone.”_

_“Oh really?”_

_“I swear it, from the bottom of my fucking heart,” she smiles, flashing teeth, “and now I have to go and sort out the books unless you all want to be working in the dark next month. Will, get me that fall menu pronto so I can pass it up top. Have fun with your new toys kids.”_

_“Oh Alana,” Hannibal says, sidelong throwing a wistful smile, “we do miss you in an apron.”_

_She turns on her impressive heels and heads out, calling back to them. “What can I say, my brain got too big for my chef whites.”_

_“Right,” Zeller mutters, “more like her wife’s taste in horses got too big for a pattiserie chef's paycheck.”_

_“Her wife's family owns the restaurant asshole,” Price exclaims, "she hardly needs the money."_

_“Katz,” Will says quickly, a headache blooming, “take your people. I need forty sherbet glasses shined and on trolleys in five. And absolute silence. Oh, and espresso in less than five, please."_

_“Double?”_

_“Why won’t you marry me?”_

_Bev waves a little salute and the bar staff head for the door, thankfully taking all the frenetic, cocktail-making, small-talking energy that the chefs are rather pleased to see the back of._

_“Beverley,” Hannibal tosses one of the buds and Bev catches it one handed, “thoughts?”_

_“Party in my mouth man, my dental hygienist has nothing on that buzz.”_

_“Rum?”_

_“Yes.”_

_"Lemon.”_

_She wrinkles her nose and shakes her head._

_“Lime for sure and sugar. Gotcha. Give me five minutes.”_

_Will turns to the chef beside him._

_“I’m sorry I joked about cooking you while my brain was riding the high of a new herbal experience. Won’t happen again," he inhales, "now get out of my kitchen everybody,” a pause, “please.”_

_The kitchen always feels much better when it is just him and Hannibal. Him and Hannibal and a big box of odd new ingredients for them to home and nurture and hack to pieces for everyone elses enjoyment._

_“You have an idea?” Hannibal asks when they are alone at last._

_“About twelve. And a headache.” Will pushes his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose._

_“Do you want to know what I think?”_

_“I am sure I am going to hear it anyway.”_

_"This is a centerpiece, not a garnish. Bold enough to carry but too much to hold a dish together. Where does that sit?”  Hannibal can't seem to help phrasing everything like a professor starting a debate. Luckily, Will likes being right every time too much to care._

_“It’s a cleanser, predominantly. Right?”_

_They both say ‘sorbet’ at the same time and then Hannibal is scooting their chairs together and leaning in._

_It's a surprising if not unwelcoming reaction. Will makes a note in a mind file to add 'mental synchronisity in the workplace' to his weird, newly discovered things that seem to turn Hannibal on._

_Hannibal says ’good morning’ into the kiss, but Will can’t help but feel like he meant ‘well done’ as though this is a reward for a right answer. Hannibal kisses simply, genorously, even from the first time ut seemed familiar. Only now his mouth tastes sour and electric._

_“Hmm,” Hannibal hums against his lips until the shock taste jumps them apart a fraction, “soothing and overloading.”_

_“_ _You are the worst,” Will grumbles without force. He uses his hand resting on Hannibal’s chest to search out the habitual pen clipped to his apron front. He breaks away and writes ‘Electric Daisy Sorbet’ down on the menu between course three an four. It looks good there._

_"People get far too complacent during palate cleansers,” he mutters._

_“How dare they,” Hannibal deadpans his hand still comfortably tracing Will's jawline, “I won’t have anybody anwhere other than at the edge of their seat in your restaurant. I hope they regard your sorbet with fear and awe.”_

_Will laughs loudly, coughing a bit as the cooling, tingling sensation tickles his throat still._

_“It’s not my restaurant you know,” he says, tucking the pen back in place and smoothing down the front of Hannibal’s pristine black apron._

_“It should be, could be,” he mutters._

_Will glances side long at him with laughter still in his eyes, but catches himself at the serious look on Hannibal’s face._

_“This place is everything to me,” he mutters, "it's all I have had for a long time."_

_“All right," Hannibal seems to approach confrontation much like everything else, carefully but persistantly, poking till it hurts, "try stepping outside and looking in Will, what if it is you that is everything to this place?”_

___"Right, because we’ve had sex twice and you get to kiss me at work and I don't kick you out like everybody else that means you can tell me what it is that I want? According to who, you?”_

_“Will-"_

_“So I don’t like working with anyone but you, great. So you've ruined the whole brigade for me and you're the best thing for ages? But we can’t run this whole kitchen by ourselves.”_

___"You are better than this place, you should be able to sign off on your own menu and not have Jack Crawford censoring your creativity.”_

_“Oh my god.”_

_“I didn’t mean to upset you with a compliment,” Hannibal tries and fails not to pout, “I just wanted to kiss you good morning because you left so early and tell you how brilliant you are, not start a fight.”_

_“Sorry,” Will laughs unhappily, “I’m sorry, hell, I need more sleep and less sex and less coffee and probably an ego check.”_

_Hannibal sniffs._

_“There are about three things on that list within my control and I can’t say I am too happy about any of them.”_

_“I didn’t mean to upset you with a compliment,” Will shoots back, “listen, I know this place feels frustratingly trapping sometimes. Hey, when you get the escape plan and the getaway money sorted be sure to give me a heads up ok? We will take anything not screwed down with us.”_

_“Oh Will," Hannibal is smiling and the fight is dissipating in the air between them, fading like the taste of batteries on their tongues, "I wouldn’t forewarn you.”_

_"Jesus, you're a surprises kind of person aren’t you? What have I done.”_

_“No I just mean, I would give you plausible deniability,” Hannibal shrugs._

_“Nobody has ever liked me enough to give me plausible deniability before,” Will says, picking up the box and the menu and Hannibal’s hand in an impressive juggling act, “tell Bev to cancel my espresso and then you can meet me in my office.”_

_“Are we having a nap?”_

_It's the only rational explanation to Will Graham refusing caffeine. Sleep._

_Will blinks, genuinely taken aback. “I was going for something closer to more weird sensation flowers and maybe a blowjob? But oh God, a nap sounds amazing."_

_Will looks at Hannibal with the exact same expression he used yesterday when examing a perfectly risen souffle._

_"You and your brain are quite something you know that?"_

_"I do and we are," Hannibal tries to hold the door open but Will hip checks him out of the way easily, he doesn't really mind, not when Will doesn't back away and instead presses up into his space, trapping him again the cold steel counter._

_"He's humble too."_

_"I say it without ego," Hannibal shrugs, "I don't require conventional reinforcement. And neither should you."_

_Will regards him for a minute, unreadable._

_"This could be the worst thing I have ever made," he says, possibly referring to his hand on Hannibal's hip or the menu tucked under his arm, it's hard to tell but easy to agree._

 

 

It’s been a long time since they have been in Will’s office, either of them.

In his recent ghost-like existence at The Academy, Hannibal avoids the place with an effort he would deny if questioned. Will made it easier to avoid by moving five states away. The office is the smallest room in existence and yet manages to contain one steel countertop liberated as a desk, a surprisingly comfortable swivel chair, messily overtacked pinboard, filing cabinet, a creaking bookshelf and a tassimo machine bought as a mean but actually much used gift from the bar staff.

Will switches on the low overhead lamp and clicks the door shut behind Hannibal as if three years, one severed nerve, a career ending scandal and a lot of awfully confusing feelings weren’t in between them and normality.

Seemingly unphased by all this physical closeness and memory, Will moves to the books with a familiar look of drive on his face. Hannibal takes a moment to linger and look around, surprised and slightly unnerved by the way Jack and Alana don’t seem to have moved a thing since Will left. It is like a tiny, messy shrine.

He runs his hand over the notes and ideas strewn over the desk haphazardly. He nods in silent approval, some of these sketches must be three years old and they are still brilliant.

Will is trying to get at the books stacked at the very back of the shelf unit, of course, and is discarding the unwanted ones on the chair beside him. When he finds what he is after he hums contentedly before hopping up onto the desk. Hannibal slides up next to him, and a significant second passes wherein they silently acknowledge the fact that neither took a moment to consider if the desk can take their weight.

Both obviously thinking about it, they awkwardly attempt to speak at the same time and start overlapping words. Will ducks his head and Hannibal graciously waves a hand for him to go first.

“I was gonna ask,” Will sets the book down sounding like breezy avoidance personified, “can you remember if we used freeze dried or dehydrated raspberries with that?”

“Freeze,” Hannibal says immediately, glancing down at the sketch and nonchalantly kicking and swinging his heels.

"You go."

“Oh, well, I was going to ask, can you remember that time I had you over this desk between courses for the Bay Symphony Banquet?”

Will, to his credit, just blinks.

The question is one of those things that Hannibal, carelessly careful, probing Hannibal, drops without much follow through or thought. A hand grenade rolled out of his pocket just to witness a reaction. It sits on the desk between them and neither move for a minute, the desk alarm clock noting the awkward seconds.

“What was the reaction you wanted there?” Will, knowing, tired, absolutely fucking done Will, just cocks his head and looks side on at him, face carefully blank. Hannibal tightens his jaw and tries to imagine a scenario where he gets out of this alive. Without crying.

“That would be an easier question to answer if you gave me a reaction, anything, a litmus test, an _iota_ of what to expect. I used to know the answer on your face before you gave it to me.”

“Imagine something," Will snaps, angry finally, "isn’t that what you are good at?”

“Will.”

“No, seriously. I thought we were here to do a job? I thought I could trust you better than this to, I don’t know, have some kind of respect for what we are doing. Do you think I would have let someone bad at their job distract me with sex on the most important night of my career?” Will, who definitely is angry and yet has a voice so irritatingly even, looks inevitably away towards the door. He drums his fingers on the page like a man waiting for a late train, Hannibal waits right along side him for whatever is coming down the track.

“I thought you were worth it alright? Once, maybe, I thought-" Will sighs and then lies, "I don't remember what I thought. So tell me, then, what did you predict my response would be?”

“Will,” Hannibal folds his hands in his lap, “with all my knowledge and intuition and years of diligent study and exposure. I could never have entirely predicted you.”

Will turns back to the books and marks a page, setting the textbook aside. His face is a little flushed. 

“Good,” he says simply and then leans up to kiss Hannibal.

It isn’t a surprise, not really. In fact, once upon a time, it would have been considered parr and course for this sort of thing to happen. It used to be as automatic as Will wrapping his knuckles twice on the pass or snapping the door shut tight, but never slamming it, post fight.

Cooking and fighting and kissing.

It was once nothing but habit and there's the rub. Hannibal just isn’t sure which he misses more. He might even have traded this –this hot press of lips, the taste of him, the feel of a hand on his jacket burning through the material- for a bit of casual trust and tradition.

Hannibal surges like a desperate thing, because he could never lie to Will when questioned point blank. He can’t act like anything but the unmade, raw mess that he is now. But, with soft hands and a hard look, Will is detangling himself from the hooks Hannibal puts into him as easily as brushing away crumbs.

They take a full ten seconds out, three good inhale, exhales each. "Who was that for?” Hannibal breathes, soft because this fragility is paper thin and tearable between them.

“I don’t know,” Will shrugs irritatingly, “but are you ready to work now?”

Hannibal's stomach drops. He feels embarrassed and cheap. _Played_ might be the right word for it, and well, isn’t this a turnabout.

 _I am always ready to work,_ his scrambled brain shouts, _I can work and pine. I have three years of anecdotal proof._

“You know me Will,” coolly and dismissively Hannibal straightens his jacket, redoes a couple of the snaps that were victims of Will’s glorious, flailing hands, “I work much better when you make me miserable.”

Will doesn’t take the bait so easily offered up.

“And here I thought the best motivation for you was revenge?”

“Ah, revenge sours the food,” Hannibal says unconvincingly and Will raises an eyebrow, “well, maybe just a pinch doesn't hurt.”

“Good,” he says certainly, as though the last time he said that wasn’t thirty seconds ago and followed up with his teeth in Hannibal’s bottom lip, “I know you want to get this guy as much as I do, whoever, whatever we are representing.”

“Even if my name isn't on the menu and nobody knows it was me?”

“Oh please, I know you too well Hannibal, you don’t do it for credit.”

Will picks up his stack of books, twisting his wrist to check the time and then visibly speeding up his movements.

“What then? Tell me,” Hannibal hasn’t moved from the desk, hasn’t done up his jacket, hasn’t moved a hair from exactly where Will put him, “tell me?”

Eerily, a timer starts sounding, so seemingly far off in the kitchen.

Will looks at the door after the sound like a soldier listening to war drums, a hint of longing visible in the profile of his face, the downward tug of his mouth. He starts to stack a great armful of books and when he eventually meets Hannibals eyes the expression isn't there anymore, replaced by a harried kind of long suffering.

"Tell me," Hannibal says a third time.

Will doesn't miss a beat.

“Satisfaction.”

 

 

_It is, as they say even in the most prestigious restaurants in Paris: a shit show._

_Hannibal isn’t one for regret, he can walk out of every awful situation he has created with a high head and still manage to see at least one good thing in it._

_There isn’t one single good thing in the way Will is looking at him right now._

_The problem with a competition is everybody looks at you differently; they pity you and assume you are tiring yourself out pushing harder or stressing about your flaws, they hold you up to other people’s standards or against your own, they watch and wait for you to fall with glee or apprehension._

_Competitions don’t make the tiniest bit of difference to the way Hannibal works. He has created banquet scale meals for hundreds of high paying guests all ready to pick holes and he has created last minute suppers in unfamiliar kitchens for disbelieving lovers, the thrown together, slap dash feasts that are abandoned midway through. Both kinds of cooking are just that to him, they are simply cooking. It is in his blood and breath and, well, there is no distinction between breathing in front of five hundred people and doing it in front of one is there?_

_Or so he always thought._

_Will hasn’t spoken a word, he is holding the piece of paper with white knuckles and looking at Hannibal and he can’t breathe, can’t get an inhale that will allow himself to speak or explain. The kitchen is in full war mode around them, the noise must be deafening, the pan flashes and blinking lights on the combis blinding. And yet the two of them stand as a still but un-calm oasis in the midst of that sea of productivity._

_Will is ratcheting up from disbelief to anger now and his fury is set to overflow._

_“You sabotaged this.”_

_It’s not a question. Hannibal looks at the clock. There isn’t time for this, this wasn’t supposed to-_

_“Would you do me a favour,” he says, turning finally away from his work at the Poissonnier’s station, “please don’t-”_

_But Will is moving, he is heading for the door with the manifest and Hannibal knows what is on the paper and he knows what is on the other side of the door. It's everything he wanted but the wrong person opening the door, it's is an import officer and a lawsuit and questions Will doesn’t know the answer to. It is the end of this place and freedom for them, but this isn’t the downfall he wanted. Not who's downfall he was planning._

_“You wanted to leave,” Will hisses, turning back clumsily, “you were supposed to leave.”_

_Hurt and confusion are written all over him, a man defeated._

_“I couldn’t leave without you.” Hannibal sounds calm, cold even, which is a mighty feat given the begging screaming echo in his head._

_He sneaks his hand out and tries to take the document, the smoking gun, out of Will’s hand. Will’s mouth opens on a sharp inhale and Hannibal has no luxury of imagining his upcoming words because the door is opening and time is up._

_He can’t get the paper away from Will with his grabbing, flailing hand, but Hannibal is still holding his Victorinox oyster knife in his right-_

 

 

He finds Will in Prep.

The place smells like earthy, raw root veg and the lights are all on in alarming full glare. To complete the full sensory assault, the radio is shouting that godawful bluesy noise. That means Will is less angry and more in need of focussing. It is still going to take forever to tune back into Classic FM tomorrow however.

Hannibal rounds the tile partition wall to lean back against the counter Will is occupying. He makes no falter in the methodical work he is doing, chopping rhythmically to the beat of the music.

“Would you like assistance?” Hannibal asks, for the first time in years feeling horrifyingly untuned to what Will might like, might need. It is unnerving, unmooring.

Instead of replying, Will goes right on working. The consistent movement and proximity bumps their arms together. Hannibal can imagine the scratchy soft feel of that flannel shirt even through the thick material of his own jacket. The fact Will has just shrugged an apron over his civvies is an indication of how impromptu this must have been. Stress chopping it is then.

Will looks so pleasingly dishevelled in his shirt and jeans and borrowed black apron. The sight is so welcome, so evocative of the past that when a sudden messy sax solo bursts from the radio it has Hannibal pulled back to the long weekend at Jazz Fest.

Himself and Will on location, representing out of a van parked up on Magazine Street. How natural Will had seemed then, wonderfully at home and stressed in the cramped space. He spent all weekend with his sleeves rolled up and his hands covered in beignet batter, apron slung low on his hips and mouth curling delightfully around the local dialect.

Hannibal could have stayed in that stupidly tiny, hot van forever. Pressed up against Will’s back and trying to reach the icing sugar which was everywhere, all over everything. The evenings of freedom in gin joints and everywhere so loud and hot-

With an unnecessarily loud noise, Will stamps on the pedal bin. He finishes peeling the butternut squash, flays the last strip of outer skin with a precise and bored movement and sets to cutting again. There is so much raw and tangible _missing_ in the small space between them it is as present in the room as the smell from the pan on the top, tarragon being carefully singed into palm oil.

Blindly, Hannibal reaches out and places his right hand over Will’s left, covering wrist to fingertip.

Not knowing what to expect from his touch is also new territory and, like a stubborn child at the roads edge, Will doesn’t shrug him off or pull away but instead bristles minutely, even as his little finger moves and catches against Hannibal’s own. An unconscious sort of tugging.

“Will,” Hannibal says, begging and not caring, tugging on his hand desperately and not caring, “ _Will_.”

Blithely continuing like Hannibal isn’t trying to hold his hand under the threat of an eight inch blade, Will speeds up, just a fraction defiant. Hannibal can feel his pulse matched to the beat. It makes him wonder just how they fell so out of tune and predictability. As if he doesn’t know.

When Will finally speaks it doesn’t sound like a threat, his mouth opens the second Hannibal curls his fingers a little in mockery of a nice casual caress.

“I am going to cut your fucking hand off.”

The smell of burning oil is sudden and obvious.

“I love you too.”

The knife falters, the blade skidding about a millimetre against the grain of the board. Hannibal can’t help it, he tuts on an exhale.

“Well that’s an uneven mirepoix,” he sighs, “shame on you.”

Will doesn’t laugh, but then Hannibal can’t see his face, can’t read anything from the steady, taught line of him pressing both warm and cold as they stand side by side.

“Take it up with the knife,” Will finally pulls his hands away; from the work, from the hilt, from Hannibal, “and the severed nerves under this damn scar tissue.”

A few stray cubes of squash have come free and fallen from the perfect structure of Will’s careful creation. As the swing door rocks once, twice, Hannibal can’t help it, he gently nudges it all back in place.

 _Enough_ , he thinks decisively.

The corridor is freezing compared to the drowsy warmth of the prep kitchen and Hannibal can feel the crisp, coolness of his whites on his skin painfully. Will is a blurry, angry shape at the end of the corridor. Despite his hasty escape, he turns without being prompted, backlit by the bright winter sun through the frosted windows.

“I’m sorry to say this Will,” Hannibal doesn’t raise his voice, “but you’ve used up your allowance of walking away from me.”

“Oh yeah-”

“Don’t say ‘watch this’ and then run away, I know you are better than that,” Hannibal hears the unmistakeable inhale as Will starts again, "and don’t say ‘do you?’ either.”

Will clamps his mouth shut, ever facetious, and doesn’t say anything, but he radiates a sarcastic annoyance with his silence alone. It has always been an impressively infuriating skill he weilds. 

“I took your pan of the heat.”

“My hero.”

“Look, can we try something?”

“A dangerous question.”

Hannibal doesn’t take it as a no, although it isn’t permission either, never is with Will. He walks forward with slow intent anyway, carefully taking his hands out of hs pockets.

“I don’t know,” he says fondly, “our dangerous moments usually came after a _lack_ of communication, wouldn’t you say?”

He is close enough now to see Will narrow his eyes. This is a conversation, so why does it feel so much like a duel?

“We could try, perhaps, volunteering one piece of information that the other might like to hear? A gesture of good faith and partnership.”

“I’m going to throw up,” Will scowls, “when exactly did you get your counselling license?”

“Maybe while I’ve had a lot of solitary time, essentially imprisoned here. Blackmailed by Jack to work under the threat of legal actions over fabricated importation-"

"Fabricated by you!"

"Yes, but against the Academy, not you, Will, I was never against you," Hannibal can't help but mutter, "we should have been long gone." 

"One and the same. I owed them alot then, couldn't imagine leaving."

"So I imagined it for you."

Will looks up at the ceiling, cursing quietly.

"Why are we having this old fight? I don't have time."

"Let's start a new one then. Loneliness isn’t fun, but it can do wonders for introspection.”

“You think I haven’t been lonely?”

It is quiet, involuntary almost and the first glimpse of vulnerability in three years. Hannibal is absolutely floored by it.

“Do you think you were the only one stuck in solitary?" Will is all twisted up now, his mouth a defensive sneer that doesn't suit him at all, "get over yourself Hannibal. Jesus.”

“I didn’t realise fame came with such a heavy price. A publishing deal, new life, lovely new partner, new restaurant-”

“It isn’t mine,” Will throws his apron down and takes a couple of steps forwards, “It’s not- look,” he breathes shakily, “the restaurant isn’t even mine. It's Molly’s. Chilton pushed me into doing that stupid book, you know I had all the material anyway. You _know_. And I was out of work and broke and so I did it because it was easy. And so yes I ran away and I met Molly, her husband had died and she was stuck with a restaurant she couldn’t run alone and we just… it just works. It’s easy ok? I am sorry. I’m sorry I took the easy way out.”

Hannibal stoops down and picks up the discarded apron. He takes almost a full minute to fold it up, obsessively neatly, tucking the ties into the folds.

“I’m sorry I can’t be happy for you,” he looks up at Will honestly, openly, “but that isn’t the life that you want, that clean and easy mundanity. I know that. I can’t give you my blessing Will."

Will looks up and he's breathless but deflated, the fight is going out of him. Hannibal passes the olive branch of an apron and Will doesn't snatch it back but takes it, gently.

"I'm sorry," Hannibal says quietly, about nothing and everything in particular, "but I am ready to work if that pleases you, however messy it is going to get.”

“You do hate a mess.”

“There is a difference between mess and chaos, I don’t mind a bit of controlled messiness, as you well remember.”

“All right,” Will sighs but he might be smiling, maybe, “that’s it right there, rule one: stop bringing up _that_ , us, when we are working. I am just about handling looking at you, I can’t think about you naked.”

“Oh rules? How delightful. And here it thought being a chef was ‘no exact science, in fact, if someone hands you a rule book, burn it’?”

“Yeah, well being a decent fucking human being is and, I know the formula escapes you sometimes, but practice makes perfect and all that.”

Hannibal makes a face like a particularly mature third-grader.

“Rule two," Will ploughs on, "don’t quote my book back at me.”

“It was a good book. Rather metaphor heavy perhaps, but a wonderful author photo.”

“I just stormed off, mentally, for the record.”

“Noted.”

They both do an easy, not-smile at each other and stand with their hands in their pockets, being exceedingly excellent with their feelings by saying nothing and doing nothing about them.

“I’m going to show you the plan,” Will says eventually, conspiratorially.

“Marvellous.”

“But first I want to hear your gesture of good faith and partnership,” he waves a hand expectantly, “so volunteer away.”

“Will,” Hannibal frowns, “not five minutes ago I told you I loved you.”

“Your love means nothing. I was promised a secret. Quid pro quo, even stevens and all that. Come on,” he looks challenging, braced, like he knows he isn’t going to like whatever Hannibal is going to say but is goading him anyway.

Hannibal sighs and takes a smooth step closer, he reaches out to take Will’s hand and isn’t surprised or offended much by the automatic recoil there. Muscle memory. His fingers hold Will’s palm and his thumb gently touches the scar, feather light, just once. He reels himself right close, feeling a surprised shake of breath on his cheek.

“I know you don’t believe me,” he says against Will’s temple, while his hand speaks for itself, his touch an apology against the raised line there, firm and gentle at once, “but I knew exactly what I was doing.”

Will swallows, audibly and nervously and the motion moves his face enough to bump their foreheads, cheekbones, noses, gently together.

“Don’t you always?” he says without fire.

“Do I look like I know what the hell I am doing right now?”

“Not really.”

“That’s why you have the plans, Will, You can be the brains and I’ll be the-“

“Knife?”

“-beauty traditionally. But, yes, I suppose I will take both burdens on for you.”

Will laughs, just when and how Hannibal expects him too. It sounds like the best memory fighting to the top of the mind, like something familiar, an old habit. It tastes like victory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSA please eat and make out using sechuan button flowers responsibly. 
> 
> Thanks to James Wong and his Electric Daisy cocktail which is an absolutely fantastic experience, changed my life and palatte.
> 
> Title from The Bleachers:  
> Hate That You Know Me


	3. It's Electric, How Symmetric (going in for the kill uh, huh)

“Forty?”

Will nods slowly like a patient but long suffering teacher explaining simple mathematics.

“You want to do forty _different_ dishes?” Hannibal runs a hand over his face tiredly.

Will just shrugs and points down at the charts and lists, the petulant student now.

“No," he says forcefully, "see, I want to do thirty nine different dishes. I want you to come up with the last one.”

“Out of ideas?” Hannibal grins and it's the smile of a skydiver at the edge of the plane, “do you know how many people would call you insanse right now?”

“Everybody but you I imagine.”

"Imagine or hope?"

"Same difference."

“To you perhaps. Good lord,” Hannibal stretches back in his chair and sighs, “forty? Jack really isn’t going to like it.”

“Does he ever? It’s a lot, I know that, but Jack did pay to fly me across the country during the holidays, in a snowstorm, offer me pretty unlimited resources including the stores, a small army of eager regulars and you,” Will waves a hand, “the approval chances are high here, as if that would make a difference to us.”

“It is a beautiful plan. Crazy is just a matter of perspective."

"Your perspective has become confused with aesthetic Hannibal, just because it's going to look good doesn't make it a sound plan."

Hannibal picks up the prep schedule, looks at the looping scrawl and flourish there, the familiar marks and signatures that are as recognisable as his own hand.

"I said _beautiful,_ not sound," he watches Will pull a pen cap off with his teeth and make a quick, vicuous annotation, "but let's not get ahead of ourselves, how do we pull it off in just under a day?"

"Easy. We should have all of it here already. We can do this.”

“Of course we can. There's that pesky hope creeping back in, oh, Will Graham: the optimist. It's a good thing I'm not wearing a hat, or I would probably have to eat it right about now."

"We can do this," Will scowls without looking too upset, "maybe even without me wanting to get on a plane."

"Why stop there? Probably even without breaking any customs and import regulations, or planting evidence,” Hannibal jokes weakly, never knowing when to shut up, “or even without anyone getting stabbed?”

“Right.”

“I’m not a liability Will, there are enough factors here for you to juggle with.”

Looking up and smiling -s _adly? Hopefully?-_ Will is hushed when he finally speaks.

“You are always a liability to me,” he takes a rushed sip of the water from his glass and frowns, twisting his wrist to squint at his watch.

“You aren’t going to sleep are you?”

“Here in the restaurant on the eve of battle, surrounded by tablecloths to iron and art to pull out of thin air? Probably not. You?”

Hannibal pushes the finger of brandy in his glass away from himself across the table, he already feels unforgivably warm and sleepy from nursing it.

“We are in this too deep now. I can’t sleep when I’ve got all that venison to be vac-packing.”

“I feel like I’ve dragged you into this.”

“I got here on my own,” Hannibal drains the glass anyway, lips smacking appreciatively, because he never can waste a thing, “but I appreciate the company.”

 

 

_“I need your help.”_

_The eyes regarding him dispassionately over the steam are worse than any witty rejoinder, more piercing than any barb or rejection._

_“What is this, hazing?”_

_Silence still. Hannibal thinks maybe he played this wrong –unlikely- or choose wrong –not unheard of- and isn’t begging at the right section._

_“First day?” A passing front of house staff member claps Hannibal on the shoulder, voice cocky and loud. Sommelier possibly, heading to the cellar._

_“That obvious?” Hannibal puts on an easy, what-are-you-gonna-do smile and rocks onto his heels._

_“Oh boy,” he plucks a peeler from the drainer and flips it a dozen times around his fingers, mixologist then, “like a turnip in a crate of catfish my friend.”_

_The mixologist looks between Hannibal and the chef by the pot and shakes his head gleefully before breezing away._

_“Right,” Hannibal turns, tries again, persistency is key, “I need-”_

_“I need,” the Chef, voice soft but not gentle, a little southern but not smooth, cuts across him, “for you to be quiet while I count.”_

_Hannibal snaps his mouth shut. He looks down expectantly into the pan between them, empty all for slowly roiling bubbles in the water and the steam._

_“Counting?”_

_“Mmhm.”_

_Hannibal can see the name embroidered on the jacket through the heat haze, it’s the name that’s on most of the slips at the pass, the books in the lockers and the oddly labelled things in the freezer._

_Will Graham steps abruptly away from the stove top._

_“Now,” he says to nobody in particular._

_Nobody in particular moves._

_Will rolls his eyes._

_‘The Creative Consultant’ Alana had called him, ‘just promise me you won’t call him Chef and don’t get in his way Hannibal, he’s worth ten of you to Jack.’_

_“A dozen eggs should have been cracked, salted and ready in this section before you even got here,” Will doesn’t sound particularly vexed. Resigned more than anything. Used to running point on both prep and service for breakfast, probably sleeps in his office._

_“May I?” Hannibal approaches the utensil tray, feeling like a man choosing a duelling pistol. He plucks an egg on the way past, it’s smooth cool surface feels good in his hand given the warmth of the kitchen._

_“Something Benihana taught you?”_

_Ah, a preceding but judged reputation, marvellous._

_“Something I taught myself,” Hannibal selects a bamboo spatula, “necessity is a marvellous tutor for discovery.”_

_Quick as oil catching in a flash fry pan, Hannibal tosses the egg upwards, spins, cracks it on the edge of the spatula. It seperates neatly, the yolk sliding into a buttered mould and ready for the water._

_“Necessity?” Will has his arms folded, eyes narrowed._

_Somebody hastily pushes the crate of eggs closer towards Hannibal down the workbench._

_“Ceremony then,” he smirks._

_It’s not the tenth egg glancing off of the spatula that does it, or the yolk falling precisely every time -which at least receives applause from the rest of the spectators- no, it’s the glance Hannibal feels against the back of his neck. He looks up from the work to see Will with his eyes on Hannibal’s wrists where his whites have rolled up, his lips are twisted in concentration, eyes coloured just a shade impressed._

_“You needed?” He asks coolly, making no comment on the spectacle until Hannibal is finished and the shells are collected._

_“Ah,” Hannibal steps away from the crate, “yes. I’m struggling to locate anything fresh, the main walk in seems to be bar staff garnish only? Surely nobody needs that many limes. Tell me, is a demonstration needed for every question? Some sort of tribute perhaps.”_

_Will almost smiles, pulls a pair of glasses from his pocket and makes a bit of a show of putting them on._

_“It’s a kitchen, not a circus,” he jerks his thumb over his shoulder, “come on. I’ll clean that mess up in five. Everybody back to it please.”_

_The walk short but silent, Will isn’t one for eye contact apparently. Following a few steps behind, Hannibal isn’t too fussed by the quiet, always comfortable with others discomfort and not feeling the need to introduce himself to a man who probably has his sock drawer indexed in some bizarre system._

_“An extra cold store?”_

_“We use a lot of fresh produce,” Will says proudly, stopping short in front of a second industrial walk-in. Despite his reputation, his air of ‘Creative Consultant’ importance, it’s the first thing he has said with smugness._

_Must be truly brilliant then, Hannibal assesses, so the stories are true and this is self-worth not self-congratulation._

_“Interesting,” he holds open the heavy door and ducks inside behind Will, “most would have a toy box in this space. You know; infusers, a Robocoupe, Hotmix Pro, something nice and shiny?”_

_“I don’t use toys,” Will says seriously._

_Hannibal looks at the back of his head where his ears are flushed a little from the cold alone. He takes a beat but there’s honest to God not a speck or trace evidence of innuendo to be found on him._

_Will moves aside so Hannibal can both take stock and pull the door closed behind. It’s an impressive array, like a cave of wonders. The shelves are full, fragrant, seasonal and by the looks of the stamps, mostly local boxes._

_“Good pageantry in there,” Will absentmindedly jiggles what looks to be a half set honeycomb and the purple scatterings of lavender move on the surface, “It’s a bit tasteless isn’t it?”_

_“Do you have trouble with taste?”_

_Will snorts, pointing to a shelf behind Hannibal._

_“That rice wine is two hundred dollars a bottle,” he laughs, for the first time, “what do you think?”_

_“I think,” Hannibal reaches into Will’s space and over his head to lift down a trough of flowers, pansies and roses that are edible and sugared and delicate, “you’re alone in here.”_

_Will’s scowl is lovely._

_“I’m not alone,” he snaps, taking the tray back and placing it back as gentle as he is angry, “I stupidly let you in didn’t I? After five minutes.”_

_“Ah, but I’ve seen your work haven’t I?”_

_Will’s eyes narrow behind his glasses, they are very tired and pale in the washed out light._

_“A fair few people have seen my work thanks.”_

_“Yes but I’ve seen your work, really seen it” Hannibal backs out of his space a fraction, “it’s all over this place. And I can say, even after five minutes, it’s… different Will.”_

_“Ok,” there are goose bumps on Will’s arms from the cold fan directly above them, “great. I’m alone because I’m different. Can you take what you want already?”_

_“You’re alone,” Hannibal says, “because you are unique.”_

_“Does this usually work,” Will waves his hands, clean nails but a little flour on his palms, in Hannibal’s general direction, “this egg throwing, food psychic routine? Does it get you places?”_

_“It got me this far. You let me in here didn’t you?”_

_Abruptly, the time out light dims out. Hannibal reaches up for the switch but something stops him; a hand closes over his own; palms flour soft and tentative, knife calluses on the fingers, grip steady._

_There’s the darkness and Will up against him, the exploratory hand on the top snap of Hannibal’s whites at the throat and everything smells fridge cold, like fresh flowers, smoked cheese and sharp herbs. There’s the smell of coffee too and then the taste of it, bitter but worth chasing._

_“Stupidly,” Will repeats, his nose bumping somewhere against Hannibal’s jaw._

_Hannibal can feel breath clouding and is randomly, acutely wishing he’d washed his hands. But then the collision he had expected comes and it is anything but the rushed impersonal thing the nature of this might suggest. It is the bump of glasses on his nose, a self-conscious huff and the glance of teeth in a lower lip._

_It shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s explorative. Mapped but unsure. Because, despite -metaphorically- shaking hands not five minutes ago, they take things apart as a day job after all. This is just practice, a busman’s holiday, one more unknown element to incorporate._

_Mid service adrenaline is a hell of a thing, Hannibal thinks as he moves his arms up at last, feeling for a shelf edge and a back that’s hot through linen with the morning’s work. God, it’s just so damn good to be cool for a second._

_The fridge kicks up a noisy hum and it’s blissfully freezing, Hannibal can’t see or feel his lips much but there’s that low laugh again as they stumble. The sound is almost better than the precarious chink of the two hundred dollar bottles of rice vinegar clinking together on the shelf propping them up and he chases after both sounds, can’t ever leave a good thing alone._

 

 

The kitchen is post-disaster movie still.

The only sounds are the whirring of fridges and the clangs and pops of oven trays cooling down. These tired, post service kitchen noises are fighting in a badly out-matched competition with the sounds of merriment echoing in from the veranda. Cheers, tipsy laughter and speeches tapped out on champagne glasses drift through the window.

The place really does looks like a bomb site, and good god, do the KP’s need a talking to, because the towers of dirty apparatus are reaching Babylonian standards. Hannibal props himself up at the pass counter, body a dead weight sitting down for the first time in thirteen hours and groaning accordingly.

The whole night had been… exhilarating, rewardingly excruciating.

Hannibal spent the entire time in the prep kitchen with his team sending through pieces of the puzzle: chocolate freshly turned from shaped moulds, candied sage leaves and fried rose petals, lamb ribs, honeycomb shards.

In a server when it hits the right line on a suger thermometer; soft caramel, ruch and sour blackcurrant jus, cognac sauce. Tiny bumpy dumplings made with sea salt and polenta flour, salmon ceviched, sliced fingernail thin and misted with a liquorice reduction before hitting another laden trolley and disappearing.  

Nothing made sense; everything just a parade of wonders that Will had asked him for.

After putting the finishing touches to the dessert Hannibal closes the chiller door on it. He swipes a bottle of ice cold water and a forgotten deep tray of duchess potatoes and heads for the main kitchen. The lights are so bright and he blinks, trying to focus after hours of detailed bench work.

For the first time in his whole career, Hannibal nearly drops a dish.

Struck dumb, he takes a few sweeps of the room to take it all in. Will’s design was everywhere, on every surface and even some makeshift ones, propped up in haste.

Hannibal dazedly walks up and down the aisles of plates being meticulously garnished and made structurally sound, scattered and sent on their way. What is taking him back isn't the beauty and clear impressiveness of the dishes -he would never doubt Will’s mental capacity to imagine and create- no, it is the memories on every single one of the plates.

He had known as he was crafting the components that he had seen most of these before, what Will was attempting to pull off here required too much focus to gamble with new recipes, but Hannibal hadn't realised the nostalgia didn't stop there.

Instead of something new Will has conjured _-recalled into thin air-_ a full rotating, immersive, sensory memory palace of the Academy, of himself, of Hannibal and all their time here.

There were tiny dark chocolate teacups with a spiced tomato soup ready to melt out from the inside, breakfast for dinner served in a hollowed out duck egg, carpaccio in folded blooms with actual fried rose petals scattered, whole partridges braised in brandy, clay baked pork medallions with a tiny mallet on each plate.

One chef ladles Silkie chicken broth into terrines and floats salt dumplings on top, hustling the dish to the pass before it all sank.

With the noisy telltale squeak signalling the door, a masterpiece leaves the kitchen. It's an academy classic –one of Jack’s favourites- thin slices of bay caught fish in a jelly mould.Hannibal knows it will be turned out at the table while next door a server might be flambéing to table, or perhaps crisping the top of a guests savoury escargot and camembert crème brule, the dark sugar and herb topping cracking under their first strike to great applause from the table…

It is pure genius; a greatest hits of everything they have to offer.

No guest receiving the same dishes as their neighbour, no table an exact duplication of another, no menu, no map, no safety or formality to keep the diners too comfortable or bored.

The chefs move like one vessel, seamless, with Will as their paddle. He is conductor and tournant tonight, spending service moving between each section quietly and efficiently with an eye on everything. Hannibal knows food, but Will knows people, and that’s how they will win this.

From the safety of the pass, Hannibal wastes time just to watch Will work; correcting the placement of a tiny forest of mushrooms on a dish before it left the pass, propping up a skewered venison fricassee in a puddle crimson sauce, turning a blowtorch on a glazed ginger pork loin.

Every single time his hands are steady.

Now in the empty and half dark kitchen, exhausted and on the verge of shaking apart, Hannibal can’t say the same for himself.

He flips the hot cloth off his shoulder and valiantly, albeit half-heartedly, swipes at a grease stain on the counter beside him. He soon gives up and begins pinching out the candles heating the plate warmers instead. He reaches as far as he can from sitting and then can stretch no more, body simply too tired to move.

Well, he tried.

Contemplating what another espresso might do to his heart rate, Hannibal toys with the idea of risking a coronary for the sweet release of caffeine when the swing door bangs on its hinges and the way he jumps in fright, it basically achieves the same effect.

“Ding dong, the Dragon is dead.” Will, as happy as Hannibal has seen him in the past few days, maybe ever, is covered in melting snow but wearing no coat. He bursts into the room and dings on the service bell twice for effect.

Hannibal reaches a little to put out another candle with his fingers, not really feeling the heat anymore.

“Defeated and turned tail?”

“Skulked off to write a glowing review I should damn well hope. You really made him work for it though. They say he nearly licked the plate after third course, but I didn’t see him smile once all night.”

 _Miserable bastard,_ Hannibal thinks.

“Miserable bastard,” Will says, still smiling, “I don’t think he’ll be bothering us again anytime soon though.”

The casual _us_ hangs in the air, another thing Hannibal is too tired to reach for right now.

“I rescued this,” Will says.

Hannibal peers around the shelf blocking him and sees a sweating bottle of champagne and a full plate cleverly held in Will’s hand. On the plate is a perfectly presented and untouched dessert, one of the hundred very carefully counted and measured servings.

“What?” Hannibal is horrified, fearing error or miscalculation, “Who did-”

“Relax,” Will, finally, gently sits down beside him, “Jesus, your face. I stole it and had Bev stash it in the out-cellar. It was Jack’s.”

“Ah. No coat?” Hannibal says, confused. “You aren’t going out to accept the reward, the award and all that?”

“I let Alana take that one. I figured she sure earned it, putting up with us.” Hannibal carefully takes the dish out of Will’s hand, he hasn’t left a single smudge or thumbprint on the glass. Hard training is hard to break.

“She put up with me spitting at her from my cage for almost four years just fine,” Hannibal says loftily, “it’s you who nearly broke her in just a few days.”

“Ha ha,” Will monotones, “so we sit in here in the dark while someone else accepts our glory?”

Hannibal imagines what it might have been like if it was different. If stupidity, possessiveness and selfishness hadn’t hacked great pieces off of both of them. Were they ever meant to stand together in the light? Was equal glory, equal happiness something they could cut and fight their way towards?

Perhaps if they can never stand in the light at the same time, they will have to settle for being in the dark but being together. He looks around at the mess, the dim kitchen and the two of them -The Victors, the dragon slayers- on washing up duty. Without warning, Hannibal laughs mirthlessly into the silence.

“This is all I ever wanted for you Will,” he says sarcastically, gesturing the whole sad, dark, secret scene, “for both of us.”

“I don’t do it for credit,” Will parrots back at him, “or glory.”

“Satisfaction?” Hannibal smiles wryly.

“You,” Will picks up the champagne, looking almost apologetic, “I did it for you. Or, for both of us, like you said. And I don’t want to be out there. Not alone.”

Stoic in his rushed declaration, Will sounds about as emotional and enthused as he does giving fifty staff a briefing on nightly specials. Confidently bored. Hannibal is almost flattered, a lot besotted by it.

For all of these high emotional walls cultivated in his absence, Will’s hand isn’t steady at all as he reaches down and snaps a shard from the sugar tower on the plate in Hannibal’s hands. He holds it out to Hannibal, hilt first.

“Would you like to do the honours, Chef?” Will asks.

“I would rather watch you work.”

Will mutters something like ‘leopards and spots’ under his breath and then he brings the shard home precisely, perfectly, and breaks the fine sugar casing.

Sharp pieces and delicate wisps of gold sugar and glitter explode onto the plate. A bright flooding of colour fills the base; pomegranate red cream and a shimmering green basil reduction coalesce in the corner of the plate which has truly become an artist’s palette; midnight coloured violet fondant mingling with the glinting crumbs of spun sugar, like Monet’s sky scooping up stars.

Breathtakingly simple and nuancedly complicated. It is their very own firework display, a moment of pure celebration caught and changing and wonderful in Hannibal’s hands.

“It’s brilliant,” Will says simply.

“Thank you for seeing it.” Will looks up at him, a moment of such clear eye contact that it makes all food and art look and taste like ash compared. Hannibal feels like a pretentious, silly fool thinking it, but it is true.

“It’s beautiful.”

It turns out Will hasn’t produced any cutlery and so they make do with pieces of tuile, shards of sugar and their fingers to demolish the dish. They pass the champagne between them –a famous pallet cleanser- and occasionally share comments or wordless grunts of approval about the dish.

Listening in silence, Hannibal lets Will point out an issue with the structural integrity of the dessert, all graciously without retaliating and pointing out the smudge of glittering gold sugar on Will’s cheek. Hannibal is charmingly insulted by the whole sentence, but feels a small victory in the presence of his own work unknowingly there on Will’s skin.

The countdown outside passes them by; some guests seem to count with a tipsy over-eagerness, while others are lolling behind. All in all, it isn’t very clear when the moment happens. However midnight itself and the gunshot crack of fireworks on the lawn are drowned out by the sudden sound of the Combi ovens, which are set to an automatic midnight clean and fill the whole room with fractious jet-take-off accoutrements.

The fireworks go on for a long time, a semi-visible flashing against the shadowed ceiling.

“Oh,” Will says, plucking a blackcurrant from the plate then making a face at the taste, “Happy new year.”

“Indeed.”

Hannibal takes a long drag from the fiercely bubbly champagne. He winces against its frivolous acidity and passes it bag eagerly, for all his brilliance, Will never was any good at pairing.

“’S good,” Will nods at the bottle.

This from the man who would, and has, settled for a glass of warm whisky with an eighty dollar steak.

“So tell me, Will,” Hannibal says, voice low and mock serious, “given all you’ve just achieved, what are your hopes and dreams for the year? Any aspirations or plans?” He smiles rather facetiously and pops the last piece of biscuit into his mouth.

“Well, I was planning to ask you why you weren’t kissing me right now. New Year and all that,” Will raises his eyebrows, “but I guess the food comes first.”

Hannibal swallows quickly.

“The work always comes first,” Hannibal coughs, a little defensive.

“I know.”

“You left.”

_Me, you left me._

“I know.”

“You think you know everything?”

Will smiles wryly, boxed into a corner and loving it.

“I wrote a whole book,” he says. 

“Well that settles it.”

“God this is hard. I know that you say you can’t predict me and I, I understand, I did run away from you after all,” Will fidgets uncomfortably, the movement knocking their shoulders together, “but I could give you an idea of my reaction now? If you wanted.”

“How much of an idea?”

“Pretty good one, I think,” Will puts his hands up around Hannibal’s neck and starts tugging distractingly at the stays of his apron.

Frozen and holding a breath, Hannibal doesn’t move, Will's fingers glance against the nape of his neck.

“But first," he tugs the stays absent mindedly, Hannibal feels them, him, everything coming undone, "I need you to answer me one question.”

“Yes?”

Will is very close to him now, he looks tired and dirty and pleased. Hannibal watches him blink, tries to think about all the times they stood on this precipice, at this very pass, in this moment with time looping back to this and those eyes on him, judging and weighing and praising.

“Do you have any sharp objects you would like to declare?”

Will grins and Hannibal kisses him in final retaliation, with such force and urgency that Will gasps against him and moves his right hand down to catch in the sleeve of Hannibal’s whites. He is probably putting stains all over him the way that sticky hand is grabbing at his arm.

Hannibal puts his hands on Will’s waist with uncharacteristic hesitance and tilts their heads slightly, kissing him with less force but no less fervency. He can feel Will smiling, probably laughing at his absolute, utter sentimentality.

The kitchen hums and clicks for a long while and several heart tripping rockets go mostly unnoticed as they relearn the feel of each other, the taste and the pressure and the measurements. They are always working, always on call and planning things and this is no different, even after all this time. Will pulls Hannibal flush up against him with the same frantic motion he uses when he makes art, kisses like he cooks with a messy sort of firmness.

Hannibal can’t get the sour taste of blackberries out of his head as he sucks on Will’s lip. He can’t help the part of him that feels like this should be a conversation with words and not just their fingers undoing the snaps on their jackets and their tongues down each other throats.

He pulls back, blinking despite the darkness they find themselves in and stops. Just for a second. Mouthing softly at Will’s jaw, trying to catch his breath and work out just what he should say, should promise-

Quietly in charge as always, Will, with firm and steady hands and mind, anticipates whatever bullshit Hannibal is about to pull and rolls his eyes. Hannibal catches sight of him in the dark, his eyes glinting dangerously and cheeks flushed as he gets his hands and his mouth back on him and reels him back in.

Ridiculously, a smattering of encore fireworks throw a golden confetti crackling up against the window just as their legs tangle together awkwardly. Ever planning, feeling, Will hooks his hands up around Hannibal’s neck and Hannibal, ever following him, grins into the kiss as Will pulls them both off of the pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> title from Julia Michaels, because grown ups can listen to cheesy pop on a loop and write about grown ups making out in walk in fridges all right


End file.
